


An Historical Document

by Tanist



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Fantasy, Horror, Mars, Reincarnation, Science Fiction, Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-03-24 08:26:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13807368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanist/pseuds/Tanist
Summary: This was written originally for the 2016 SSSS Fic Exchange, in response to a prompt of LooNEY DAC's: A thousand years after the onset of the Rash Illness. The reason for the 'character death' tags is that it's a thousand years in the future. All the characters have died. Repeatedly. Now matters are finally being sorted out.....





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of a number of stories, poems and such written much earlier in fandom history. I had this mass of work that I was hesitating to publish, both because I wasn't sure I had it quite right, and because I have difficulties with the mechanics of posting things. With semi-newmachineries, I finally was able to post properly. Then my 'Pages' app died, taking everything with it. Now I'm posting all the old stuff I can reconstruct, or get back from people who had copies.

 

LooNEY DAC's Prompt: An Historical Document

It is the Year 1,000, and the Earth is Cleansed. The horrors of the past have passed into history, now largely forgotten by everyone but historians, mages and researchers into epidemiology and the evolution of diseases. The Rash Illness has joined the Black Death, Malaria, the Great Influenza Epidemics, Martian Wasting Fever and Ebola in the ragbag at the back of the closet of the collective memory of human kind.

Emilalli Mikkel Reynir Västerström, Emil to his few friends, heir to the enormous fortune and estates of the Västerström Lineage, knows all this. Indeed, he probably knows more about the Rash Illness than do most people his age who are not actively engaged in research into the history of diseases, and he considers that there is no need whatsoever for him to learn more on the subject. However, he has made the still-lengthy and inconvenient sublight trip to Old Earth for the sole purpose of being confirmed in his position as heir, and to undergo the lengthy and wearing rituals that accompany this confirmation. On the eve of his thirtieth birthday he will keep the traditional Vigil, but before that can happen he has to survive the preliminary Ordeals. Emil is dreading the coming two weeks.

Emil dislikes Earth. He was born on Mars, on the huge lichen farm which is the mainstay of the holdings of the Martian branch of his family, and he is a Marsie through and through. He finds Earth over-hot, even in the Scandinavian countries, damp and steamy and uncomfortable. Prolonged stays cause him to develop distressing and aesthetically displeasing skin conditions, and the humidity ruins his hair. It always takes a few days for his oxygenating nanobots to adapt completely to Earth conditions, and he suffers episodes of breathlessness until that happens. The higher gravity tires him. But as the proverb says, 'What can't be cured must be endured', and being on Earth carries one major consolation: he will soon see his best friend and distant cousin, Lalli Hotakainen. The family lines have intermarried often over the past nine hundred years. Indeed, Lalli is the other potential heir, and as Emil's friend and his closest surviving relative, will be required to stand by Emil and support him during his Ordeal. Lalli's own Ordeal has not yet happened, although he is the older of the two by a few months, because he forcibly declined to be tested before Emil. This has raised suspicions among the sort of lawyers who pay attention to the lives of the extremely wealthy. Oddly enough, neither of the young men is concerned about this at all.

*******************************************

The night after Emil's arrival on Old Earth, and his brief local flight from Reykjavik spaceport to the family headquarters in Mora, he and Lalli dine with their old friend and mentor, Professor Mikkel Madsen, who is to supervise Emil's Ordeals. These, Emil knows, can be physically dangerous as well as a test of character and mental strength, but he isn't too worried - well, not really worried, as such. Okay, maybe just a tiny bit concerned.......

Mikkel is talking, at length, about the coming night's work, enthusing about the history of the journals and diaries Emil is to read tonight, down in the vaults. Emil is a little distracted by the food. Say what you will about Old Earth, he muses, some of the food is superb, and the family cook is a genius at producing meals that are delicious while being light enough to enjoy despite the humid heat and dragging gravity. He notices that even Lalli, a notoriously picky eater, is devouring his cheese omelette and green salad with obvious pleasure. With their dessert of strawberries and crisp wafers, Mikkel pours a single glass of white wine for each of the young men, while refilling his own glass from the jug of iced water. Emil notices this, and grimaces slightly. Ah, well. He had suspected that entheogens would be involved at some stage in this process, he just had not expected it to be so soon. Still, this is an initiation of sorts, and tradition must be observed. But both their glasses had been filled from the same bottle..... Concerned, he glances at Lalli, a protest rising to his lips. Lalli only smiles his faint smile, raises his glass and touches it to Emil's, and takes a sip. Heartened, Emil does the same. The wine is a good Sauternes, aromatic, cool and slightly sweet, with the least hint of a musty undertaste. Emil drinks it down. He notices no immediate effect.  
********************************************

The family vaults are fireproof, bombproof and well shielded from sunlight, for the safety of the books and historic documents they contain. Not to mention the large fortune in historic artifacts, jewels and precious metals, and research projects which his ancestors have deemed unsuitable for release to the world. Emil has heard rumours of some of this research, and the thought makes him shudder a little. Among this trove are the original journals and diaries of the Silent World expedition which established the fortunes of his family, as well as bringing back knowledge which changed the world. These documents have been treated with preservatives, and are stored in stasis fields for good measure, but Emil is still all too aware that he will be touching history. He hopes that he won't destroy anything important.

******************************************

Emil sits at the rough desk in the life-size replica of the famous vehicle, and opens the first journal. Why here, he wonders? There are perfectly comfortable reading chairs elsewhere in the Vaults. But Mikkel, when asked, had muttered something about protocol, verisimilitude and ambience, and had furthermore insisted that the journals must be read in a particular order. Sighing, Emil opens the journal of Tuuri Hotakainen.

He expects to be bored, though he is determined to do his duty, but Tuuri's journal surprises him. He remembers that the expedition's mechanic and researcher was also a skald, who seems to share some of the poetic skills for which her brother and cousin became famous. Her descriptions of stunningly beautiful landscapes and devastated cities, triumphs and disasters, joy and terror, are vivid and moving. She speaks at length of the finding of books, documents, artifacts; of the heartbreaking horror of the discovery that the vaccine on which they had pinned so many hopes was a snare and a delusion, creating monsters worse than those the Illness had made. The worn pages tell stories of deadly encounters with trolls, beasts, giants, murderghosts, and even worse things, of terrifyingly intelligent networks of monsters inhabiting whole cities, of the developing skills of their stowaway mage Reynir, and of her growing affection for the young Icelander.

As Emil reads, the old world opens to him in startling reality. He feels Tuuri's terror when her cousin disappears, and her later relief at finding him still alive; her loneliness in the long cold winter nights; her pride in the skills she uses to keep their ancient and cranky halftrack or 'tank' running; her feelings of helplessness as she assists their doctor in nursing first Captain Sigrun Eide, then his own ancestor Emil through life-threatening injury and sickness; her simple pleasure at the antics of their kitten. The last chapter covers their unexpected journey to find other, hitherto unknown, survivors, and their triumphant return to the Known World, battered and in the case of some of their number, permanently damaged, but bearing the seeds of new hope for their world.

As he turns the final page Emil becomes aware of Lalli's hand on his shoulder, the firm grip an anchor to his own time and world. He notices that Lalli's expression is distant, and faintly sad.  
"She was a good cousin." he says. "I miss her."

Emil shivers.  
**********************************************

Next is the diary of Reynir Árnason, Icelandic mage and cofounder, with his brother-in-law Onni Hotakainen, of the school of magic still extant today, teaching a fusion of the Finnish and Icelandic styles that is far more effective than either alone. Emil's cousin Lalli graduated from this same school, nine hundred years after its founding, and has strengths and skills his ancestors could never have imagined. Emil wonders how the original Reynir would feel about the changes he had wrought in history, how his work had helped the survival and progress of the entire human race. Emil hopes he would be proud.

Reynir's diary is a tatty old pocketbook, rebound after the expedition into a heavy leather cover. The writing is an archaic formal Icelandic script which Emil finds difficult to read, even though he is fluent in the language of science, commerce and diplomacy. But the account of Reynir's adventures is absorbing enough to keep him reading despite the difficulty. The first entries are those of a boy, amazed and terrified at his own daring in leaving his loving but smothering home, then enthralled with the wonders of the world outside his home farm, then shocked and very afraid at finding himself lost and stranded in the Silent World, and finally beginning to grow into confidence and courage as he discovers his talent for magic, and moves from being a civilian dead weight on the expedition to being an active participant in their explorations, using his farmboy skills in caring for their gift-of-the-gods kitten, tracking and cooking, foraging and healing.

The diary tells of his fears and hopes, his determination to make something of his gift of magic, and of his growing love for Tuuri. Outpourings of grief for the family he left behind. Love poems. There are details of his dreams and prophetic visions, scribbled runes, partial maps of the Dreamworld, sketches of the others, recipes, even a pressed flower from their last days in Denmark. An account of the desperate search he and Mikkel made for the missing Lalli, and of the unexpected results of that search. Sorrow over the coming end of the expedition, and the breaking of their fellowship, perhaps forever. And even in those early days, notes of ideas which will eventually become the basis of the mage school.

Emil reads, and is touched and impressed by the courage of that over-sheltered boy, thrown suddenly out into the Silent World to sink or swim. From behind him comes Lalli's soft voice. "I have come to like Reynir better as time goes on. We're friends, now."

********************************************

The next journal is that of Captain Sigrun Eide. Well, there are two books, the larger one her expedition journal, with a second small notebook, her personal diary, attached to the inside of the back cover. The notebook is marked by bloodstains, irregular blotches on the cover and the first few pages. Although he knows there can be no scent after so long, and after so many preservation processes, Emil can smell it quite clearly - he will never forget the scent of Sigrun's blood. What...? Where did that thought come from?

Lalli's voice comes from behind Emil, softened almost to a whisper. "It's okay. The soul remembers. And she survived, that time." A hand touches his hair, the gentlest of pats. Emil is confused, but after a moment turns his attention back to the journal.

In the pages of her account for the public record, Sigrun's handwriting is a flamboyant scrawl, spreading across lines like a shout for attention. The journal is a meticulous day-to-day record of their activities: dates, times, locations. A list of injuries and sick calls. Books and documents found. Supplies expended. Problems encountered. New varieties of trolls and beasts. Battles fought. Maps inserted between pages, with Tuuri's hand-drawn addenda. Communications with home base. A record of their resupplies, and the finding of a stowaway. On that page, the inkblot where Sigrun broke her pen, gripping it in rage - he smiles, remembering....Emil shakes his head, briefly dizzy....no, that was the other Emil.

Notes for a funeral service, which fortunately proved not to be needed after all. Emil shudders, remembering his own near-death from septicaemia... No, wait, that isn't in the journal, what is he thinking..... Confused, he turns his attention to Sigrun's personal notebook. The writing is much smaller, neater. Perhaps because it is such a small book; perhaps because in her private diary she feels no need to make a display of near-illiteracy. The first page has a small label: 'If found return to'......and her own name and those of both her parents. The only address is 'Dalsnes'. The next three pages are her will. Then a farewell letter to her parents, saying she loved them. Emil realises that he doesn’t know the end of Sigrun’s story, despite a feeling that he should, and hopes that letter was not needed for many years. After that, the little book is a long list of names. Emil cannot make himself read it to the end.

He continues to sit, staring down at the battered pages, until Mikkel's voice interrupts his reverie. "Enough for one night, I think. You boys should get some rest. Tomorrow will be hard."

Emil nods agreement, hauls himself to his feet. He is emotionally wrung out, and very tired. He glances at Lalli, and can only think that his cousin and friend looks, somehow, different.

 


	2. An Historical Document

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emil is bewildered - more so than usual. The plot thickens.

AN HISTORICAL DOCUMENT: Part Two:

Emil sleeps like a rock and wakes the next morning feeling well rested and alert. If his dreams are strange..... well, that is only to be expected, after travel, and given the heat and oppressive atmosphere of Mora, where he has never felt at home, despite holding dual citizenship. Today's activities are mostly meetings with company officials, reports from various executives and their committees, a meeting of major stockholders, and a presentation by the company accounting division and his bankers. Formal, boring, and covering material with which he is already very familiar. Worth monitoring closely, though; Västerström Holdings is extremely successful, and success will always draw the envy of the less successful, as well as the notice of outright criminals. 

In the late afternoon he and Lalli take a walk around inner Mora, browsing through a few bookshops, pausing at a small café for cake and coffee. Lalli has never been very chatty, but today he seems more reticent even than usual. Emil is still aware of that nagging sense that something about his friend and kinsman has changed; he can't pin down exactly what. Lalli's physical appearance seems unaltered: tall, lithe body, strong but perhaps a little thinner than is healthy, the lean form encased in a plain good-quality charcoal-grey jumpsuit; long pale hair in a neat braid, tied today with a dark green ribbon embroidered with leaves and flowers. Narrow, sharp features, high cheekbones, wide grey-blue eyes.......that's it, Emil thinks. Something about his eyes. Or is it a trick of the fading afternoon light? Emil can't tell.

*******************************************

That night, and for several nights thereafter, the two young men work their way through the vaults. Over the past nine hundred years, the original building has been added to, built onto, and finally built around, as adjoining properties were acquired, sometimes for reasons of security during various historic upheavals, sometimes simply because an ancestral Västerström wanted a larger garden. Most importantly, for the numerous expansions of the historic archives, secure storage spaces, arsenals and research laboratories underlying Västerström House. Level upon level upon level below the ground, cared for by legions of maintenance robots, illuminated by the self-replicating bioluminescent microorganisms that made the third Västerström fortune. Buried. Secret.  
Professor Madsen accompanies them, dour and unobtrusive, his presence often unnoticed or forgotten. 

They find things, some of them not in the official catalogues. While much of the space contains records, in storage media ranging from sewn birchbark scrolls through printed books and documents, generations of various computer discs and drives along with equipment that will play them, right up to the latest generation of record crystals, not everything is so bureaucratic. There are works of art, musical instruments, alien weapons and tools, royal regalia of lost civilisations, magical artifacts carefully protected by stasis fields, rooms full of mineral samples, laboratories, a whole floor of biological samples. When they find those, Lalli turns even paler than his normal colouring, and hovers near the exit while Emil explores the area. He seems deeply uneasy, constantly glancing about and glaring into the shadows until Emil rejoins him, then backs out of the room and reseals the door with what Emil considers unnecessary force. 

Emil is puzzled and somewhat concerned. He still has not pinned down the exact nature of the subtle changes in Lalli, other than 'something about the eyes', but he remembers rumours about the Heir's Ordeals of earlier family members. Not all of those potential heirs survived. Some, he has heard, lost their minds. He wonders if even the Västerström heritage is worth it. 

*************************************************

At the end of the first week, they dine with several members of the Mora Society. Emil has heard rumours of the Society before, but finds himself thoroughly intimidated by the reality, and more than a little surprised to discover who some of them are. He had been imagining some dotty group of rich eccentrics with an obsession for an heroic period in history, and a peculiar obsession with a weird disease, but these people are far more than that. Some of them he already knows from other contexts, or they are famous people he has heard of but had never previously met. Hard men and women, obsessed with history and particularly with the history of the Rash Illness. Scientists, explorers, businesspersons and successful entrepreneurs. Senior mages, scientists and medical researchers. Historians. Ruthless fanatics with a shared motto: 'Never Again'. They simply assume that once the formalities are over, Emil will of course become one of their number. Emil is far less certain. To him, something feels off. He isn’t sure what it might be.

When they descend to the vaults that night, two of the Mora Society members guide them to another area not marked on their own maps, and leave them there overnight. Mikkel explains that this laboratory, moved here in its entirety and complete with the row of tall glass cylinders gently bubbling along one wall, is the one where Emil's thirty-seven times removed aunt, Siv Västerström, accomplished her famous research. Also that the trolls in those cylinders are Siv's original specimens, and are immobilised and heavily sedated but still alive. 

Emil thinks about spending a thousand years alive in a storage cylinder for all of thirty seconds before he faints. When he comes back to himself he is on the floor, his head supported on Lalli's rolled-up coat. There is no sign of Mikkel. Lalli, grim-faced and silent, is holding his hand. In their tall cylinders the trolls continue to bubble softly. 

******************************************************

By morning Emil is ready to give up. He has spent the rest of that night on the floor, sometimes talking softly to Lalli, who occasionally squeezes his hand but does not reply; sometimes drifting in a nightmare-ridden doze, in which the trolls speak to him, plead and threaten and beg for release. Lalli says nothing, but several times Emil surfaces to feel his friend's hand cold in his, and faintly trembling. Night in the vaults seems timeless. After what might be several painful eternities, Emil is jolted awake by what he dearly hopes is a bad dream - a tall young man in a tattered Cleanser's uniform is reaching out from the nearest cylinder, pleading for help in archaic, broken Swedish. He opens his eyes to see Lalli's concerned expression, and realises that he has been moaning in his sleep. 

Lalli's face is hollow-cheeked, red-eyed and tracked with tears. Emil makes up his mind. He can't do this any more. Not to himself, and not to his kinsman and friend. Lalli has stood by him stolidly and courageously through this whole ridiculous, monstrous charade of ritual and tradition, but now he looks as if one more thing would break him, mind and body both. Emil stands, staggering a little, and holds out a hand to Lalli, who grasps it weakly and pulls himself upright. They exit the room to find Mikkel standing outside, his look of concern at their appearance quickly masked behind his usual bland expression. 

Emil starts to explain that he can no longer do this, that he will surrender his claim to some remote cousin; to anyone really, he doesn't care anymore, and will go into exile as is traditional, perhaps on some remote asteroid mining settlement. Uncharacteristically, Lalli pushes between him and Mikkel, grips Emil by the shoulders and almost lifts him aside, and speaks for the first time in what seems like days. His voice is soft, little more than a whisper, but his tone is emphatic.

"No! Emil, we have to go on. We don't fail! We need to finish this. I need to finish this. Help me!"  
Emil stares blankly, not understanding. Lalli reaches out and gently shakes him.  
"Come on, Emil, we're both cold. Shocky. Sauna. Now."

In the sauna, Emil is alarmed to see how gaunt Lalli has become. Has their Ordeal really only been going on for a little over a week? He thinks of it, now, as 'their' Ordeal, Emil notes wryly, rather than merely his own. Lalli's ribs and collarbones stand out; his fine flyaway hair is dull, and once loosed from its braid falls limply around his face. He seems to have aged several years in a night. Thinking back, Emil realises that since the first night he hasn't seen Lalli actually eat anything more than a few mouthfuls of fruit and meat. He had put it down to a delicate stomach, stress, and the heat, but then it occurs to him: Lalli is Earth-born; this weather should be a fine, cool Autumn for him. Unless he had planned on visiting Mars after this was over, and has been having acclimation treatments........no, Emil is sure that Lalli would have mentioned that. Emil shakes his head, puzzled, and goes back to worrying.

Lalli stays coherent long enough to extract Emil's promise to go on. He insists that Emil swear to do so, by his name, by his honour as Heir of the House of Västerström, and by several archaic gods. Then he passes out. Emil almost tells Mikkel he intends to quit anyway, for Lalli's sake; thinks about how Lalli would look at him if he did, and resolves to continue for as long as he is able. Mikkel picks Lalli up from the sauna bench, wraps him in a bath sheet and carries him to bed as if he weighs nothing. He examines Lalli closely, using several instruments Emil has never seen before, then shakes his head and sighs. 

"I'll give him something that may help", he says. "At least this time it's just shock, grief and exhaustion rather than injury or serious depletion of his magic. He needs to sleep until he wakes naturally. You should stay with him, Emil. Get some rest yourself. If you mean to go on, you'll need it."

Emil wonders what Mikkel means by 'this time'.

Lalli does not even flinch at the cold hiss of the pressure injector against his arm


	3. An Historical Document - Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We find out just why the boys are so disturbed by finding trolls in Emil's basement. **Warning for a slight descent into horror**

AN HISTORICAL DOCUMENT: PART THREE

 

They sleep from dawn to late afternoon. When Mikkel looks in to check on them he finds them curled up together, Lalli lying at Emil's back with a protective arm slung over him, Emil still deeply asleep. Lalli's eyes blink open. He gestures Mikkel to silence, carefully disentangles himself from Emil and draws Mikkel aside. 

"He'll be okay, I think" Lalli whispers. "Things seem to be going much as we planned. I hate that he has to go through this, but there's really no other way. He is going to need those memories, however much it hurts him to regain them. I've Seen this. So have Onni and Reynir."

Mikkel looks disturbed, but nods reluctant agreement. "I'm just glad both of you are lasting as well as you are. I hadn't expected that this would be so physically hard. Especially for you. Why didn't you tell me how bad it would be? If I'd known, I might not have permitted you to start the process."

"We would have gone ahead anyway, you know that. With or without your help. We have a better chance with it. And if only one of us survives, it has to be Emil. We need him, to find us, and bring us all together again, and maintain a safe home for us all until that happens. So long as he can maintain the Västerström Heritage, we'll have that base, and all the resources we need to do our job. Otherwise I wouldn't care less about the cursed thing! I'll find him again, some lifetime. I always have, so far."

Mikkel grimaces. "Mages! I wish I could be so casual about death."

"I'm......not casual, Mikkel. I'm afraid. I'm afraid every time. And it will probably hurt. And I truly hate to spend so much time sleeping in Tuonela when I make it there, and the drifting in void between lives if I don’t. But we have to go on."

After Mikkel leaves, Lalli watches Emil sleep for a few minutes, then shrugs, gently extracts a pillow from under Emil's head, and rolls under the bed to rest until dark.

**************************************************

Emil wakes as the last sunlight is fading, and feels an unfamiliar pang on realising that Lalli is not sleeping by his side. He thinks about how close they have always been, despite being born on different worlds and sometimes only seeing one another at the yearly family gatherings. His mind feels strange; dim and foggy and full of reflections, as if he had been looking into a mirror, seeing images of images of images receding into infinity, images of the two of them always side by side..... As he slides off the bed, some instinct makes him look under it. He is unsurprised to see Lalli there, curled on his side and peacefully asleep, one hand extended as if waiting for another hand to reach out and take it. He reaches out. Lalli's eyes open slowly, and Emil nearly recoils as he finally sees clearly what has changed. Lalli's eyes have become a silvery-blue colour, and in the dusk of the room they are faintly glowing. It should be alien, terrifying, but somehow it just feels familiar and right.  
************************************************

 

That evening they dine with Mikkel before returning to the vaults. Emil does his best to coax Lalli to eat, telling him that if he insists on continuing then both of them are going to need all their strength. Fortunately the food is light and tasty: beef bouillon, lichen crispbread from his own estates, chicken, fruit. Lalli eats, and a little colour comes back into his face. He looks strange, Emil thinks, strange and at the same time very familiar. That faint blue luminescence in his eyes persists. Mikkel shows no reaction to the change, leading Emil to wonder for a moment if he is imagining it, or if it is an entheogen artefact. The thought drifts into his mind that he shouldn't worry about it, it's just Lalli's magic showing a little on the surface of his body. That thought feels like a memory.

The night is passed in exploration and becoming familiar with more of the contents of the vaults until about midnight, when they return to the replica of the tank. Emil sits at the desk, with Lalli in what seems to be his preferred position at Emil's shoulder, and Mikkel presents three heavy journals, all interleaved with notes, charts and photographs. One is the formal expedition journal of his own ancestor, the original Mikkel Madsen, cook, medic and strong man of the team. Then comes the journal of a UN doctor and researcher, keeping records and making breakthroughs in understanding the nature of the disease, continuing with his work despite knowing himself to be doomed to death or worse. 

The next is a transcription in Icelandic clear of the coded journal which the original Mikkel kept for the spymasters of the Nordic Council, with notes added by Tuuri Hotakainen. Emil smiles as he remembers Mikkel's face when Tuuri first handed him the decoded transcription she had made of his 'secret' journal, and strongly suggested to him that now was a good time to come clean about his real mission to the rest of the team. Emil cannot suppress a giggle at that memory...... Behind him he hears a snort that might almost be a chuckle from Lalli, at the same thought. Emil has a brief moment of confusion - how does he know/hasn't he always known what Lalli is thinking, or at least what he is feeling? Then he decides that if he is losing his mind he might as well just go with the flow. Lalli pats his head, softly. 

Once the two are alone, and before he opens the journal of that earlier Mikkel, Emil turns to Lalli with a question. He is unsure if it is a thing he should ask, but he has a strong feeling that this is something he needs to know. 

“Lalli….I’m not really sure what I’m asking here, but when you passed out last night, Mikkel said something about ‘this time’ it being only from ‘shock, grief and exhaustion’, not from you being hurt or overusing your magic…..what was that about? Was it something to do with the trolls? I know they really got to me - just the thought of them being alive and suffering, sealed up like that for a thousand years”……. Emil shudders, remembering. “But whatever happened to you was different. I’ve never seen you look like that before, except after that graduation trip you did with the mage school to South America, four years ago, that time your group nearly got trapped in a volcanic eruption, and you caught some awful tropical disease while you were waiting to be picked up. I was afraid for you then, but this scared me so much I was ready to give up the whole stupid business. Still am willing to give it up in an instant if you ask. Do you want that, Lalli? Tell me the truth, I’ll do it, I promise!” 

Lalli thought for a moment, wondering how much to say, then decided that he was unlikely to get a better opportunity than right now. He expected nothing major to happen tonight, and the time was coming closer when Emil would need this knowledge if they were all to survive. 

“Emil, I think those were the first trolls you have seen in your life?”

“Well, yes, of course they were! Trolls are extinct, everyone knows that! Or I thought they were, that’s what we learned in school. I never thought about Great-Grandcester Siv’s specimens - if I had, I would have assumed they had been killed nine hundred years ago. Why are they still alive? And why are they *here*?”

“I’m afraid there are still quite a number of trolls and beasts left in the world, even a few giants. That was what my graduation class ran into in South America. Mages have their own Ordeals, things they must endure before they are considered fit to practise their art in the world. Like the Shamans of old, we enter the Dreamworld and find there a worthy opponent to test our magic and our control, contending against them both there and in the physical world. Not all of us survive, but those who do have proved their courage and competence. Modern mages often use organisms left over from the days of the Rash as their test - it gives us something really dangerous to contend against, and slowly we are finding them and releasing the souls of those unfortunate beings. People mostly believe they are all gone, or that they never really existed, except for those who believe trolls are cryptids. In this case they are right. One day the Earth will be truly clean, but that day is still in the future. For now, such beings survive only in very isolated places: underneath the tundra, in remote inaccessible mountains and caves and the densest jungles, or deep in the oceans. But we will find them all eventually, and free them. Whatever the Mora Society says.” Lalli’s expression hardens to a grim determination very different from his usual impassive calm.

“So what happened to you on that trip? You never really talked about it, and it didn’t seem right to push you when you had been so ill. When they brought you back I thought you were dying. So did Mikkel, I think. I remember when you were in the hospital, he’d bring me in to visit you at night, when you wouldn’t sleep. You weren’t really awake either, just tossing and turning, calling out for me and for someone else….Tuuri and Onni, whoever they were…..I’d just sit and hold your hand, it seemed to comfort you. I remember being so glad when you finally woke up properly. I missed you.”

Lalli looks disturbed. “Tuuri is long dead, I don’t know where she is. We need to find her too. Onni is my older cousin, on the other side of the family, the Finnish side. He teaches at the mage school, and lives there. We work together. He’s something of a hermit, doesn’t come to family gatherings. I don’t think you have seen him since you were a small child. He brought me to visit you once, when you and I were about three years old, and once he had seen you for himself he thought it was okay to let me associate with you. I think he likes you.”

Emil is unsure whether to be offended or amused by this revelation. Thinking back, he has a vague recollection of a tall, thickset, whitehaired wall of a man glaring down at him, but at the time he had been much more interested in the tiny boy who had come with him. 

“”But when we went to South America, my group all thought that what our scrying had located was a surviving nest of trolls, sheltering inside an old volcanic mountain. We thought we could handle it, but that the task would be hard enough to test us thoroughly. We set out to release them. It was a long trek overland through very rough country, but that was part of the test of our courage and resourcefulness. We arrived at the mountain and started work. That was when we discovered that it was not a nest of individual trolls but a giant, a huge one, distributed through the core and lava tubes of a dormant volcano, surviving and growing in the warmth and shelter, partly masked from our scrying by the rock, and by something else. The giant had merged with the remnants of one of the old dark gods from that part of the world, reawakened when the magic came back. People had made human sacrifices to it, in the early years after the Rash hit, so it had grown even larger and stronger, strong enough to conceal itself from all but the most skilled, and it had magic.” Lalli shivered at the memory, his face tense with the effort of holding back tears. 

“It was almost too much for us. Some of us died. In the end I had to trigger an eruption of the volcano. It was the only way to stop it, Emil. It would have taken us all, known what we knew, and come ravening out into a world that wasn’t expecting it, armed with that knowledge and magic…… a new outbreak, that nightmare all over again….I couldn’t let that happen. 

So I reached down into the magma at the roots of the volcano, and sang it back to life. That was hard. The volcano had been sleeping for a long time. I couldn’t have done it without having known you. The fire….answers your soul, and I remembered, when I needed to, how you would sing to fire, long ago…. But doing it took more magic than I really had, drawn out of my body and souls. I expected the effort to kill me. That’s why I was such a mess when they brought me home…….Then last night, when I had to communicate with those trolls in Siv’s old lab, try to talk to them, explain what we are going to do, feel their suffering, their rage and pain, try to keep my control and not be drawn into the Rash mind, resist the urge to let them out of the cylinders, to join them……that brought it all back. It was almost more than I could bear.”

Lalli was shaking now, his eyes closed. Emil didn’t even think before he turned and gathered Lalli into his arms, holding him tightly, raining soft kisses on his closed eyelids, on the frown line between his brows, smoothing down his fine hair. All their lives they had been close, but he had never felt moved to do any such thing as this. He was shocked at his own temerity, yet holding Lalli like this, offering the warmth and comfort of his own body and spirit, seemed so natural, so right…..

After an immeasurable time, Lalli stopped shaking, sighed, and disengaged himself gently from Emil’s arms. His expression was almost back to his usual calm, but somehow harder, more determined.   
“So you see, love, why we have to go on. Both of us. We need to see this through, to save us all.”

Emil has no idea what to say. Lalli has never called him ‘love’ before. But somehow it feels right


	4. An Historical Document

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emil gets another history lesson. And rediscovers the taste of oatmeal. Lalli considers ancient weapons.

AN HISTORICAL DOCUMENT 

PART FOUR

The rest of that night and part of the morning is spent on those three books. Mikkel's expedition journal is much what might be expected: details of food supplies, medical supplies, drafts of indignant letters to the expedition organisers, records of injuries and sick calls, results of the weekly blood tests on Tuuri and Reynir, lists of books and documents salvaged, translation drafts. A brief mention of nonspecific damage sustained by their scout soon after their entry into Copenhagen, Emil's minor injury - the second of many, Sigrun's wounding by a small troll and later by a sjodraug. The finding of yet more suggestions that there might be a possible cure or vaccine for the Rash illness. Their first encounter with the horrific entities that they dubbed 'murderghosts'. A lengthy list of injury and illness among the crew, including Emil's near-death following a rat bite. On and on, until Emil's eyelids droop. A second book and document list, labelled 'Reserved for T. V'; a third, much shorter unlabelled list, in decoded Icelandic, both on loose sheets tucked into the journal. 

In the secret journal, Mikkel speculates about the doctor's journal salvaged from the site of their first raid, and writes exultantly about the rediscovery of a precious text on antigravity propulsion. He gives a somewhat disjointed account of the team's entrapping and slaying of a giant which Mikkel knew included the still-living remains of the woman that he had once hoped to marry. Entries follow in Tuuri's neat handwriting, covering the events of those terrible weeks following, when it seemed all too likely that in the aftermath of that slaying Mikkel would be lost to death or insanity. Her account of Lalli's disappearance, of Mikkel and Reynir's attempt to find him, and of the return of all three, along with her wild yet surprisingly accurate speculations about the antigrav ship that dropped them back at the tank. Mikkel's eventual resumption of the journal, and Tuuri's increasingly frequent additions to his notes, until by the end of the expedition both the open and secret journals are a joint effort. 

By midmorning they have read all three journals, and Emil's mind is buzzing with speculation. As they make their way up to breakfast and bed, Emil is struck by a sudden craving for oatmeal porridge. This, he thinks, is weird. It's not something he has ever even tasted before. Nevertheless, there it is in his head, complete with appetising smell, creamy mouth feel - and there should be a dab of butter and honey to make it perfect, he thinks. Emil tells himself that this is ridiculous. But he still has oatmeal for breakfast.

 

******************************************************

The next three nights are the story of the original Lalli Hotakainen. Well, not so much his own story as the saga he composed, long after the expedition, when he was finally free to tell the truth of all that had happened. Perhaps the delay was fortunate, Emil thinks; those years gave that Lalli the time to grow into being a skilled poet as well as a hero. Like the greatest of the historic sagas, this one is three nights long. He neither reads it nor watches it as a holo-projection, which is what he would have expected, but listens, enthralled, as Lalli - his Lalli - recites it from memory.

Lalli himself seems strangely peripheral to the tale, for all his involvement in the action and danger of the expedition: he speaks at length of the countries they traversed and the secrets they uncovered, of battles fought and horrors confronted, of perilous journeys in the Dreamworld, of fear and danger and doubt. He barely touches on his personal story, giving only the briefest mention to the traumatised and bewildered youth dragged out of Keuruu by events he didn't understand, and to the hard work, suffering and hardship by which that youth became a great poet and a powerful mage. His saga recounts the heroic deeds of that larger-than-life figure, Sigrun Eide and her right-hand warrior, the original Emil Västerström, and speaks at length of the cunning and cleverness of Mikkel, direct ancestor of their own Madsen, matched only by the razor mind of his own cousin Tuuri. He tells of Reynir's struggle to master his dangerously powerful magical talent, and of his own secret gratitude to the Icelander. 

Emil finds himself caught up in the tale to the point where it seems like his own experience. He feels again the agonies of wounds, experiences grief and dread and terror, but also the joy of finding friends, companions who will stand by him forever, and the great love of his life. He listens to the exploits of that Emil, thrilling to the story as he watches the green boy grow into a compassionate and competent man. He sits breathless with excitement as that other Emil experiences flight for the first time, struggles to learn strange languages, and wanders under unfamiliar stars.

He leaps the Midsummer fire with his love, and sees, as if he were present, the scene a year later in which he and Lalli enter the depths of the forest to claim their children, feels the shock of joy as his daughter's silver eyes meet his own.....

Emil wakes sitting at the desk in the tank, feeling too spent and tired to move. On the nearby bench Lalli sprawls, looking as weary as Emil feels. "The bunks are made up" he says. "Mikkel thought you might be too done to go back upstairs. He left some food too. Said he'd see us this evening." The food is basic: rye bread, cheese, hazelnuts, dried blueberries, water. The kind of stuff that the members of the original expedition might have eaten, Emil thinks wryly. 

"No, this is good. They would have thought this was luxury. At least this isn't tuna and carrot stew with candles." Emil doesn't quite get the reference, but smiles at Lalli anyway. Once he has eaten he falls into a bunk and is asleep in seconds, sprawled on his face with one arm dangling over the side of the bunk. Lalli watches him for awhile, with an expression of tenderness that might surprise Emil, were he awake to see it. Then he takes a pillow and blanket and rolls under the adjoining bunk with what seems to be practiced ease. As he relaxes into sleep one hand falls outward, almost touching Emil's hand.

***********************************************************

The next night things change. Lalli wakes Emil in the late afternoon, and they make their way upstairs to shower and put on clean clothes before joining Mikkel for a meal. Professor Madsen seems unusually solemn. Over dinner he informs them that after they have read the journal of the original Emil Västerström an important member of the Mora Society will be waiting to speak with them, and tells them both to consider very carefully their responses to what they will be asked. Mikkel leads them, not back to the tank, but to the oldest of the several armouries under Västerström House, where he leaves them to read.

They do not begin at once, wandering instead through the ancient room which is now more of a museum than a battle-ready armoury. Ancient and primitive handweapons, including those borne by the members of the original Silent World expedition, explosives and incendiaries, an Admiral's ceremonial sword which had been the property of one of Sigrun's granddaughters, a delicately-wrought and still deadly bell-branch which had come into the family as a gift from an Out Isles mage who had married a Västerström some two hundred years after the expedition. Lalli looks this one over carefully, then shrugs and moves on to a case in the centre of the room which holds an ancient hand-forged rifle, a battered puukko in its woven birchbark sheath, a worn flametrooper's bandolier complete with its charges and attached flask of incendiary fluid, and a long, heavy engraved dirk with its ornamented sheath. He smiles sadly, sighs, and does not turn off the stasis field.


	5. An Historical Document: Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those unfamiliar with the Celtic tales and traditions: a bell-branch is one of the traditional tools of Celtic magic. It can be used to induce altered states, including sleep, anæsthesia, visionary dreams, memory, and the sleep from which there is no waking. In the old tales it turns up as a weapon of war (casting the population of a fortress into sleep so it can be easily taken), a tool of mischief (used by the Fey in messing with humans), a bardic tool for inducing the Aisling or dream state from which comes inspired poetry, and by healers so as to 'bring healing rest to warriors with deep wounds, or to women in childbed'). 
> 
> I figured that Celtic mages in the world of the story might retreat to their ancient refuges in places such as Mona, the Isles or the mountains of Wales and Scotland, with the Isles being the most likely to be contacted by Nordic explorers.

An Historical Document: Chapter Five

While Lalli contemplates the bell-branch, considering how a thing so beautiful and harmless looking can be so deadly, Emil joins him, stands staring for a moment and then reaches a hand toward it. Lalli senses the power begin to stir, feels a tremor run through the forked branch, hears the faintest vibration in the tiny bells of metal, glass and substances he does not know. Startled, Lalli slaps his hand away, then flinches back at Emil’s hurt expression.

“Emil, I’m sorry. But the stasis field is still on, and in any case you must not touch this until it recognises you as its owner. You are not a mage, so until it knows you, you cannot safely touch it. Why else do you suppose that something that looks like a work of art or some weird musical instrument would be stored in an armoury?”

“I don’t know. I wondered about that. I was just going to pick it up to look at it better. But it’s a weapon, isn’t it - a magical one? I’m so stupid…..” 

Lalli sighs again at Emil’s distress. “Not stupid, just ignorant. And it is not merely a weapon, but a tool. It can heal as well as kill. You have had no need to know about the tools the Isles mages use here on Earth, while you were off on Mars farming lichens. But it is yours, brought into your family as a marriage gift to your many times great-grandmother when she wed a Celtic mage from Barra. It belongs to your family line, and once it knows you it will obey you. Turn off the stasis field. Give me your hand. ”

Emil is puzzled, but does so, then stretches out his hand. Lalli takes it gently, then moves Emil’s arm so that his hand is positioned above the branch, stretched as if to grasp it by the base. Suddenly Lalli’s puukko is in his own hand. Emil feels the sting of a small cut in his palm, then Lalli’s hand tightens around his own, closing his fingers around the branch. 

Emil has no words for the sensation he feels as his skin touches the ancient wood. It feels not only of wood, but of wind, water, metal, earth, fire, music. Magic. Somehow he knows that the wood came from an old, strong apple tree, and was cut under the star-sprinkled sky of midwinter, and that each of the tiny bells it bears has its own voice. He knows that, because at the touch of his blood on the wood the bells begin to whisper together, then to sing to him - a song of greeting, of welcome, of recognition. And to his own astonishment the recognition is mutual. Some deep memory stirs, of using the branch. But in the image passing before his inner sight, the hands on the wood are not those of his present body. Those hands are tanned brown, covered in small straight scars which he recognises, somehow, as the marks of a lifetime of practice with blades, and are the hands of someone far older than his present age. And along with the sight comes memory: grief, so overwhelming that he sways, and the branch almost falls from his hands until Lalli steadies him. He blinks at Lalli for a moment, his eyes blurred with tears, and finally says: “I am about to remember something. I think I should be sitting down for this.” Lalli nods, puts an arm around Emil’s shaking shoulders, and guides him to a seat.

****************************************************


End file.
